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Carpal Tunnel
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One dictionary online says there is an Arabic word "murr". Another says it is of Semitic origin. A URL about says it was from a shrub common in MidEast. But since the shrub was relatively small, it must have been a lot of work to get much of it, and that was why it was expensive. http://www.historicjesus.com/glossary/myrrh.html
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The gold, frankincense and myrrh brought to Bethlehem as gifts for The Child were rare and highly prized items.
How else could Joseph, a poor carpenter from Nazareth, finance a trip to Egypt to get his family away from Herod's wrath ... house and feed them on the trip and ditto when they got there until he found steady work which probably entailed learning Egyptian!
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just this week, in an other thread, Dr bill brought up the word strigil.. in ancient times, soap was pretty crude, and water in many places, was none to clean, or readily available. to 'wash' one rubbed a soft oil into the skin, and the gently scraped off the oil and dirt.. aromatic oils, like myrrh were added to olive oils (third press usually, the cheapest and coarsed olive oil, and the one smelling the most olivey) the fragrant oil was better smelling... another common oil, was lavender. lavender has at its root laver, (latin) and goes back to lou in IE, to wash. the plant was first cultivated in ancient persia, but was common all through europe by roman times.
its now associated with old ladies, but its scent neutralizes body odor, especially ones associated with menstuation. it was so common for washing, its very name means to wash! and if you have ever seen a lavender bush, you know, its a small (18 inch .5 meters) high bush. myrrh is just another plant oil.
{waterless hand soaps, are still available, usually based on lanolin, (oil from sheep) you rub them in, and rub or scrap off.. }
cultivate -- does any one know what that word used to mean?
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old hand
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which probably entailed learning Egyptian!
I'm guesing that they only needed koine Greek. Anybody remember when the Ptolemy Dynasty started? They were Greek. Cleopatra was a Ptolemy, by the way.
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Ptolemy started his dynasty - he was one of Alexander's generals, who argued about the splitting up of his kingdom, so that would be - what - 300s BC? Something like that.
alex
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The character Myrrhine, a young and sexy wife, appears in the bawdy comedy-drama Lysistrata by Aristophanes. One web-source, authored by a professor, states that the various character-names were not simply names: they had meanings in ancient greek, the name Myrrhine being a sexual reference to a part of the female anatomy. http://www.humanitiesinthebeginning.org/Hum211/greece12.htm; final paragraph The professor, being professorial, uses a technical term to specify that part, but I suspect that Aristophanes would in fact have used the more earthy, "street-language" of his day. On the other hand, a friend with whom I discussed this felt that the name Myrrhine relates to myrrh.To check further I contacted a friend in Athens who is a by profession a Greek-English translator. Her reference-books indicate that the word indeed refers to the part of the female anatomy. HOWEVER, there remains the possibility that there was, in greek, a linguistic connection between the anatomical word and the substance myrrh. Here my research ends except to note, in support of a possible such connection, that the substance myrrh was used as a base for fragrant oils and perfumes (see definition in bartleby). Post-edit: boldfaced added to highlight the tie to the subject of myrrh, per of-troy's question.
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Okay, my post wasn't perfect, but i did try to relate myrrh to other oils, and why oils were used for cleaning, and why scented oils were especially valualbe for cleaning, and pointed out one oil, lavender oil, (which is still pretty common in soap) actually gots its name from the root word to wash, and i refered to an other word that Dr bill brought up strigil (look up it Latin root... its has a meaning of binding or string for tyeing, strigil being soft, and strangle the same root, to bind firmly.. strain is related too.)
and my word stuff was ignored, and we went off on a perfectly valid language discussion (related to what language was spoken in Egypt.. )
and then we get back to myrrh, but with a familiar twist--
The professor, being professorial, uses a technical term to specify that part, but I suspect that Aristophanes would in fact have used the more earthy, "street-language" of his day. On the other hand, a friend with whom I discussed this felt that the name Myrrhine relates to myrrh.
To check further I contacted a friend in Athens who is a by profession a Greek-English translator. Her
refeerence-books indicate that the word indeed refers to the part of the female anatomy.
HOWEVER, there remains the possibility that there was, in greek, a linguistic connection between the
anatomical word and the substance myrrh. Here my research ends except to note, in support of a possible such connection, that the substance myrrh was used as a base for fragrant oils and perfumes (see definition in bartleby).
now i have dyslexia, and i read those comments(which i did bold parts of, but other wise just copied) , and what i got was, no facts about the word, myrrh, but an inuendo, that myrrh was just another word to degrade women.. he couldn't prove it.. but he put the idea out there.. have you noticed how every thread is reduced to sexual inuendo, and degrading woman? or attempting to degrade women?
Mind you, he clames come here to talk about words, and what words? degrading terms for women. not the first time, and most likely not the last.
so, boy, do have a problem with women? is your purpose here to find new words to use, to call women by anatomical, insulting terms? it does seem to be a pattern. first, you are sweet, and befriend the women, and then, once they have opened up, and started to trust you, you turn on them, and insult, and blame them..
as has been pointed out, you presumed that one of the newly name old times was a woman. but of course. bullies like women. they are easier to pick on. but i know your tricks, boy, and as you trot them out, i'll point them out.
when a woman makes an interesting, educated word post, you counter, how ever possible, clearly or tangentally, with a post about words that are used to reduce woman to their anatomical sexual characteristics. Mind you never say this woman or that woman is a c***, oh, no, you are much to refined.. No you wouldn't do that, but Aristophanes would, and you just want to point it out, you know, helpful like.
Reader, watch for this trick. and watch for his other tricks..how he pretends he is in agreement with others by using their names, how when his trick are layed bare he goes on the attack (after all the best defence is a good offense) learn his tricks. and learn, there is nothing to him but tricks..
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veteran
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lavender...myrrh is just another plant oilHi Trojan, glad to see you still around (occasionally)! As Robert for some reason deleted the starting post, I'm unsure if this has been said already, but what the hell.. Yeah, I'd forgotten about lavender actually being named after one of its main uses (washing = Latin lavare I fink). Just occurs to me that lavatory has the same root - a "clean" word made "dirty" by association, perhaps.  For those who are even moderately into aromatherapy, lavender is a fantastic general use oil, especially noted for treating burns, but good for skin conditions of all sorts, as well as being relaxing. Associations with old ladies don't do fresh lavender oil justice at all. Myrrh, on the other hand, is rather less useful. It is quite strong smelling, slightly bitter and musky. Not bad, but not nice. However, it's a powerful antiseptic and must be a good preservative, as it was used for embalming bodies. It is incorporated in some home-made toothpaste recipes, although I haven't a clue why teeth would need embalming.  Fisk
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of-troy, is there anything I say that you won't rant about?
PS: my post was strictly word-related. Check the link.
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